League of Women Voters Considers Public Option Essential

From the League of Women Voters today:

Public Option Essential to Health Reform
Senate Finance Committee Fails to Protect Consumer Choice and Control Costs

WASHINGTON - September 30 - Today League of Women Voters national President Mary G. Wilson expressed disappointment with the Senate Finance Committee votes defeating amendments to include a public option in health care reform legislation in the following statement:

"The public option is the key to consumer choice and to lowering health care costs. Both are essential elements of health care reform. The Finance Committee’s failure will hurt consumers and result in higher costs. How could they be so short-sighted?

“The current health care system is endangering our economy, our health, and our national security. Congress needs to pass comprehensive health care reform and the public option is vital. It is universal coverage that will determine the humanity of our system and a public option will make that possible for Americans who cannot obtain coverage through the traditional employer-sponsored plans. We believe that health care reform legislation must guarantee access to comprehensive and essential benefits to all U.S. residents.

“But the possibility of universal coverage is not the only advantage of the public option. We must control costs and the public option is the best chance to bring costs into line with reality. As a nation, we are spending $1 out of every $6 we earn on health care. Offering everyone the choice of a government administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans is key to lowering costs and providing real choice to consumers.

"The public option is critical to health care reform. Congress and the President need to demonstrate real leadership and move forward, not backward, with true health care reform."
###
The League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan political organization, has fought since 1920 to improve our systems of government and impact public policies through citizen education and advocacy. The League's enduring vitality and resonance comes from its unique decentralized structure. The League is a grassroots organization, working at the national, state and local levels.

Well said.

Peace.

Carper Fail on Healthcare Reform

Yesterday Senator Carper cast his vote on two amendments to the pending healthcare bill in the Senate Finance Committee. The first amendment offered by Senator Rockefeller and offering a robust public option failed when Carper and other Democrats voted against the amendment. Seeing his chance to play the minds of the voting public, Senator Carper voted to support the second amendment offered by Senator Schumer knowing full well the amendment would fail. But he still gets to tell the unknowing public he voted for the public option.

The behavior of some politicians is disgraceful. Senator Carper's actions in supporting the corporate healthcare system at the expense of real reform to benefit the people is unforgiveable.



Peace.

Cluster Bombs, The Gift That Keeps on Killing

Children continue to die in Lebanon and other parts of the world as a result of remaining cluster bombs. These weapons are delivered by a single device carrying many small bomblets. Some of these bomblets fail to detonate on arrival and remain on the ground or in trees and bushes to kill or maim the unwary.

In August alone, six children were hurt in cluster bomb explosions in Lebanon.

How many more must die before we as a civilized world put an end to these weapons?

The U.S. continues to be the largest manufacturer of military hardware around the world. Cluster bombs and their delivery systems are part and parcel of this manufacture. We must stop. These weapons have no place in a world claiming any measure of humanity.

Peace.

AFSCME Carper Event

Not that it will change Senator Carper's mind, but many will be in place to show him how we feel about real healthcare reform. Join in if you can. The more the better. Carper needs to feel the heat for his failure to support real healthcare reform.

Sen. Carper:
Real Health Care NOW



Join us

Thursday, October 1 at 4:00 PM
The Circle, Georgetown, DE



To tell Senator Carper

Health Care reform must include:



· A Strong public option!

· Big Corporations pay their fair share!

· No taxes on our health care benefits!



We will deliver thousands of letters from Delaware residents to Senator Carper’s office on the Circle.



Press conference begins at 4:00 pm.



Questions or RSVP:

Call Courtney @ 916-494-3325

Or Morgan @ 773-515-4093

Why Fight for Healthcare Reform

Here are a few good reasons from the United Steelworkers.

• Every 12 minutes an American dies because they lack health insurance (45,000 annually). This is more than the number of deaths due to drunk driving or homicide.


• The average health insurance plan for family coverage currently costs $13,375. Over the past decade, premiums have increased by 138 percent. If the current trend continues, by 2019 the average family plan will cost $30,083.

• 46.3 million Americans are uninsured. When they can’t pay, the costs for their care shift to the insured. On average, insured Americans are forced to spend an additional $1,100 in premiums due to this cost-shifting.

• Between 2000 and 2008, the percentage of employers offering health insurance coverage to their employees declined from 69 to 63; for firms employing less than 10 workers, the decline was even greater – from 57 to 49 percent.

• From 2000 to 2008, the percentage of employees with an annual deductible greater than $1000 increased from 1 percent to 18 percent. Among small businesses, more than one in three workers must spend at least $1000 out of pocket before their health benefits kick in.

• A recent study found that 62 percent of all 2007 bankruptcies were linked to medical expenses. Of those filing for bankruptcy, nearly 80 percent had health insurance.

• The cost of healthcare now causes a bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds.

How much more does anyone need to know? Call your Congress critters today. Write that letter-to-the-editor. Tell all your friends and neighbors. We must not let the opportunity for real reform pass by.


Jeff Parker, Florida Today

Peace.

Carper on Healthcare

And Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) said it

"just doesn’t seem fair" that Democrats would renege on the initial bargain with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA.

“Whether you like PhRMA or not,” Carper said, “we have a deal.”

That deal promises big pharma no price negotiations from the White House. Congress may press for such (and we all know that will not happen) but the administration promised not to pursue that course.

Deal or no deal we deserve better treatment than this from our elected officials. Senators should represent the voters not the corporate interests of our nation.

Peace.

Rising Concern Over U.S. Deaths in Afghanistan

Changes in the course of the Afghanistan occupation mean U.S. troops find themselves at increased risk these days.

In July and August, the number of Afghan civilians killed by coalition forces was 19, compared with 151 for the same two months last year. Over the same period, U.S. troop deaths in the war more than doubled -- 96 this year, compared with 42 last year.

Many see this change as reason to worry the new procedures may be giving the Taliban increased opportunity. Members of Congress, family members of troops, and others across the nation are seeing the increased risk and expressing concern.

The question remains how long will we continue to put our forces at risk for what appears to be a losing cause? Why cannot we leave the country or change to a course that promises much better results without all the military force? Democracy or any such change will not be instilled from outside the nation. That idea has not worked at any point in history and is not likely to work today. The Soviets failed once in Afghanistan and now the U.S. is following the same downward slide.

According to recent polls Americans support for continued use of troops in Afghanistan is waning with a majority of Democrats favoring bringing our troops home. I stand firmly in that corner. We have no more children to lose.

Peace.

Industry Loves the Baucus Faucus

President of American Health Insurance Plans, Karen Ignani, penned a letter (PDF) to Senator Baucus expressing her gratitude for his bill.

On behalf of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), I am writing to thank you for your leadership in the health reform debate, acknowledge the important contribution that you are making to advance the national reform discussion, and outline our views on your Chairman’s Mark for the “America’s Healthy Future Act.” We thank you for your efforts to lead an unprecedented and rigorous bipartisan process. We view the introduction of your proposal as an important milestone in this debate and stand ready to lend our technical expertise to help create proposals that are workable and sustainable over time.

Ignani is one of the lotter winning CEO's with a 7-figure salary who could care less about real insurance reform. She supports measures that force people to buy insurance from hers and other companies. She expresses opposition to any measure of taxation that increases the already exhorbitant cost of policies.

Ignani continues with a veritable laundry list of suggestions to make the Baucus bill more amenable to industry. Since the current bill is so very favorable to the insurance companies at the expense of consumers any more bending to the will of industry is purely unconscionable.

We are losing enough with the Baucus offering. We have lost too much and waited too long already. The time for honest reform including a strong public option available on day one is the only acceptable option remaining today.

Peace.

The Rural Brain Drain

In lower Delaware one often hears tales of young people finishing an education and leaving for other parts of the country. The issue is one of national importance as other parts of the nation suffer the same problem these days. In an article in The Chronicle for Higher Education a pair of university sociologists examine the problem and the causes.

The most dramatic evidence of the rural meltdown has been the hollowing out—that is, losing the most talented young people at precisely the same time that changes in farming and industry have transformed the landscape for those who stay. This so-called rural "brain drain" isn't a new phenomenon, but by the 21st century the shortage of young people has reached a tipping point, and its consequences are more severe now than ever before. Simply put, many small towns are mere years away from extinction, while others limp along in a weakened and disabled state.

...hollowing out results from a combination of macro forces reshaping nonmetropolitan America: the unfettered rise of agribusiness and big-box retailing that has suffocated local ownership, the decline of unions and blue-collar wages, employers' increased reliance on exploited undocumented workers, and the systemic underinvestment in younger workers entering the new economy's labor force without college degrees. The rise of agribusiness has meant that there are hardly any farmers left in America's agricultural regions: Just 2 percent of Americans operate farms now, and 42 percent of Midwestern farmers earn less than $20,000 per year. Independent family farmers today live more like sharecroppers, and, as the new film Food, Inc. so powerfully shows, the "Jeffersonian ideal of pastoral life" has been subsumed by a farming system dominated by mega-farms and hog hotels.

What can be done to prevent or to correct this? Education and changes in the way we educate our children today is part of the proposed solution.

The single-minded focus on pushing the most motivated students into four-year colleges must be balanced by efforts to match young people not headed for bachelor's degrees with training, vocational, and assorted associate-degree programs.

Another step involves matching university and community college training centers with local businesses to provide internship opportunities for those students not bound for a four year post-high school education.

There must be national changes, too. Immigration reform is necessary in order to provide a stable workforce in some areas. Immigrants need to be welcomed and encouraged to seek citizenship.

To that end, national immigration policy should also be reformed away from the costly and often counterproductive interdiction efforts toward ones that offer longtime undocumented workers a pathway to citizenship and encourage a more complete participation of immigrants in their home communities.

In the final analysis there is much which must change if we are to reverse the current trend.

The residents of rural America must embrace the fact that to survive, the world they knew and cherished must change. And, on a national level, rural development must be more closely linked to national economic growth priorities, and policies must be created to help these communities prepare for a future that is already here.

We are late in the game, but the final score is yet to be seen. Delaware as well as the rest of the nation must begin to face the problem and to develop solutions which work for our state if we are to lead any part of the future.

Peace.

Ezra Klein on the Baucus Faucus

Ezra Klein has a laundry list of postings in the past two days about the Baucus heathcare proposal. Klein does a fine job of first analyzing the bill and then today offers his recommendations for improving the bill.

1) Kill the "free rider" provision. Kill it now. The employer mandate in the HELP bill raises more money and hurts fewer people. If that's too onerous, then you can lower the penalties. But whatever you do, do not let this provision survive. It's one thing to see a policy spin off the rails because of unintended consequences. It's a whole other thing to build in a time bomb that will inflict completely foreseeable damage.

2) Increase the subsidies, and in particular, put more money toward out-of-pocket caps. The bill does a lot for the truly poor, and quite a bit for the nearly poor, but it doesn't do enough to protect working families from the costs of illness. This costs money, of course. But that's money you can get from implementing fail-safe policies like those advocated by David Cutler and Judy Feder. And it's money that will prevent a massive backlash when struggling, sympathetic families are told they have to buy insurance they can't really afford to use.

3) Phase in Ron Wyden's Free Choice amendment. This has three effects. The first is that it makes the bill better for the currently insured, as it gives them a clear benefit: the freedom to change their health-care coverage if they don't like it. Second, the Lewin Group estimates that it raises more than $300 billion over 10 years, as workers choose more affordable plans and the government loses less tax revenue through the employer tax deduction. Third, it makes the system better by building out the alternative to the employer-based system. What's not to love?

Speaking of the Health Insurance Exchanges, the Baucus plan deserves plaudits for opening the exchanges to businesses of all sizes. But it takes too long to do so. Rather than starting the five-year process in 2017, either shorten the process to three years or start the process in 2015.

4) Create real competition in the insurance industry. Baucus's plan doesn't include a public option, doesn't include a public option trigger, and even neuters the co-op option. I'm among the few who think there's a real possibility that the new regulations will lead to a much more efficient and humane private insurance industry, but it is, after all, only a possibility. It's much likelier to happen, however, if they're protecting themselves against real competition in the market. And if it doesn't happen even in that scenario, then at last people will actually have somewhere to go.

5) Create incentives for bipartisanship. This bill was built amid a long, bipartisan promise. Baucus made real concessions to attract votes from his Republican colleagues. He made the bill cheaper, and eliminated the public option, and strengthened the protections against federal funding of abortions and benefits for illegal immigrants, and built in hard funding mechanisms that actually improve the deficit. Everything Republicans originally wanted is in this bill. It is, in fact, a moderate Republican bill. It looks like nothing so much as the bill Republican Senator John Chafee Sr. proposed in 1994.

The remainder of Klein's posts offer a worthy read and there is real reason to believe he is not yet finished.

Peace.

This Day In History

On September 17, 1787, the U.S. Constitution was adopted as the law of the land. In spite of many ups and downs over these 222 years the Constitution stands today as the measure by which America runs. The opening paragraph summarizes the major principles underlying the Constitution.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

We would do well to remember those summary principles each and every day these days as our nation sets a course for the future.

Peace.

The Baucus Healthcare Faucus is Released

The so-called Bipartisan Six released their plan (PDF) at last. No public option. Required purchase of healthcare insurance from the industry. Cooperatives. Lots of delays. Less than nothing. This plan is a disaster.

We need a strong public option from day one or we have too little reform to count. Massachusetts and their required purchase plan demonstrates the abject failure of such a course. The nation cannot afford to take the same track.

Peace.

The Cloud of War

As we contemplate the ongoing healthcare mess in Congress and hear some words about immigration reform and other pressing social issues across the nation let us not for one moment forget the monstrous cloud of two ongoing wars, Iraq and Afghanistan. The pressures of supporting those military events may prevent the Obama administration from enacting the kinds of social and economic reform the country expected with the election.

James Carroll in a posting today says it all.

The scale of President Obama’s military mistake is becoming clear exactly as the moment of his greatest opportunity to improve American life has arrived. The tragedy, as with Lyndon Johnson, will be the destruction of his proposed social transformation by his simultaneous opting for war, as his core supporters among liberals and Democrats feel bound to oppose him. The day after Obama’s unifying speech on health reform, Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, sent a foreboding warning on Afghanistan, ahead of an all but certain request from the Pentagon for a major escalation there. The storm cloud approaches.

If we are to have any real future in this nation of ours we must end our militaristic policies and begin to seek peace for one and all around the globe.

Peace.

Peace Underfunded in Increasingly Militaristic World

The world is over-armed and peace is under-funded

says United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

They are destabilising societies and feeding the flames of civil wars and terror.

I could not have said it any better.

The United States leads the world in military expenditures. When will we ever learn we are losing this race? Peace is a much better course to pursue.

Peace.

Drought in Mexico a Sign of Things to Come?

Water shortage in Mexico is at crisis proportions in the current drought.

Crops are wilting in the countryside, and the capital's water shortage has turned dire as Mexico grapples with its worst drought in more than half a century.

Will the U.S. be next? The current problems with oil may look pretty small in the face of a looming water shortage around the globe.

Peace.

New Afghan Strategy Looks Same as the Old

Administration claims to the contrary the "new strategy" in Afghanistan looks just like the same old losing mess.

Western forces were engulfed in bitter controversy yesterday after Nato air strikes on two oil tankers hijacked by the Taliban in northern Afghanistan led to carnage with a fireball killing 95 people, dozens of them civilians.

More civilians killed as "collateral damage." We do not win friends this way. Our influence following such attacks is to move more people to the insurgency.

How much longer will our government continue this failing course? Can our leaders not see the failure of their ways?

Peace.

The Public Option Continues to Struggle

RobertAriail.com

And Congressman Castle continues to oppose any thought of a public option.

We need more time to understand the process. ... there's a lot of misrepresentation that makes it extremely hard for all this to move forward.

How many years must we wait for this to move forward? How many must die before real healtcare reform is offered?

Congressman Castle and many more in Congress continue to live in the pockets of the healthcare industry. I guess a man considering a run for the Senate needs to look out for his major contributors at the expense of his electorate.

Peace.

US Wants 20,000 More Troops For Afghanistan

More bad news this morning on the war front. Reports of requests for an addtional 20,000 American troops are circulating.

The commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan will ask for 20,000 more international troops as part of his new strategic plan for the alliance's war against a resurgent Taliban.

When will enough be enough? Will we never learn the solutions to Afghanistan do not lie in military force?

I continue to be distraught at the mess we are generating. For the amounts of money being spent on military force we could feed, house, educate, and medicate an entire population in a nation like Afghanistan. Continued pouring of funds into the black hole of military action is futile. We must change our course if we are ever to have any measure of "victory" in this quagmire.

Peace.

Resolution--Health Care Reform

From the Progressive Democrats of Sussex County, DE, comes this fine resolution. Please feel free to modify and distribute with your organization's name and to your Congress critters. This issue is important enough we every one need to spread the word as far as possible.

Peace.

Resolution - Health Care Reform

WHEREAS, 20,000 die each year in the United States because they cannot afford to see a doctor, 700,000 go bankrupt because of their medical bills, almost fifty million Americans lack any health insurance at all, and millions more who do have private coverage pay increasingly unaffordable premiums; and
WHEREAS, every developed country except the United States has concluded that providing health care for all their citizens is a right not a privilege; and
WHEREAS, health care in the United States is now in major crisis and affordable health care for all Americans is a matter of the utmost urgency in our time; and
WHEREAS, despite efforts by well funded extremists to disseminate false and misleading information about health care reform, public polls show that an overwhelming majority of Americans want health care reform to include, as a matter of choice, a robust public option similar to Medicare in order to create, as President Obama has said, significant competition for the medical insurance industry; and
WHEREAS, co-ops or so-called “triggers” are inadequate in and of themselves to generate either the kind or the amount of competition needed to keep medical and insurance costs down;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Progressive Democrats of Sussex County  urge Senator Thomas Carper, Senator Edward Kaufman and Representative Michael Castle to vote for only such healthcare reform proposals as contain a robust public option at all stages of the legislative process including conference and reconciliation, and encourages legislators to use any available parliamentary means to pass such reform;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Progressive Democrats of Sussex County shall send a copy of this resolution to all members of Congress who represent its members.

DFA Hiring Field Organizers in DE

Democracy for America is hiring state-level Public Option Field Organizers for an intense three-month pressure campaign to pass a public option as part of healthcare reform.

We're upping the ante and are looking to put full-time, hired, grassroots field organizers, on the ground to pressure elected leaders to pass healthcare reform with a public option in your state.

You can see the entire job description here: DemocracyForAmerica.com/PublicOptionApply

You know your state better than anyone and you have better contacts. We need your help to get the word out because time is critical and we have a very tight timeline to hire additional staff.

Can you pass this position onto anyone you think might be a good fit? Can you post this on a local blog? Send it to a local email list?

Public Option Field Organizers will have their work cut out for them. They need to hit the ground running to build grassroots pressure and get Senators and Representatives off the fence in support of the public option.

If you know anyone interested in joining this intense three-month campaign to get a public option passed, please send them this link:

DemocracyForAmerica.com/PublicOptionApply

Thank you for all that you do,

-AQ

Adam Quinn, Field Director
Democracy for America

P.S. Questions? As always, feel free to contact me and the rest of the DFA Field Team at field@democracyforamerica.com.